Tidbits - September 17, 2015 - Left and Labor Dialogue on Sanders and Corbyn; A Sanders - John Lewis ticket?; David Hilliard on Black Panther film; 9/11 and Cancer; lots of announcements; and more....
Portside
Washington helped create the conditions with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers keep on growing. The authorities are overwhelmed, as are the solidarity networks. The refugee crisis has revealed a different rift: between thousands of ordinary citizens, from Greece to Germany to Britain, ready to share their bread their homes, and governments determined to fortify their borders and protect their power, backed by both the anxious and the frankly xenophobic.
In upcoming votes for the European Union's most indebted countries, the left will have to battle both the forces of austerity and a resurgent xenophobic right. The backdrop for elections in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland is one of deep economic crisis originally ignited by the American financial collapse of 2007-08. The response of the EU is massive cutbacks in government spending, widespread layoffs, and double-digit tax hikes on consumers.
Images of Czech police inking the skin of newly arriving Syrian migrants, and the government says they were unaware that this brought back memories of the Holocaust, when prisoners at Auschwitz were systematically tattooed. While in the north of Europe, in 24 hours, responding to a Facebook campaign, 10,000 Icelanders opened their doors to their Syrian brothers and sisters.
The EU's belt-tightening measures are cutting holes in Europe's social-safety net. Austerity as an economic strategy is more than just throwing a scare into countries that, exhausted by years of cutbacks and high unemployment, are thinking of changing course. It's laying the groundwork for the triumph of multinational corporate capitalism - undermining the social contract between labor and capital that's characterized much of Europe for the past two generations.
The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean has captured the global spotlight. The EU response has focused on enforcement and a crackdown on traffickers. Some European political leaders propose using their navies to stop boats, returning the refuge-seekers to their points of origin, and then sinking the craft. This enforcement-based approach ignores the primary drives of migration but also jeopardizes millions of people who are seeking refuge from repressive regimes.
In Algeria, as elsewhere in Africa, economic neglect and despair at corrupt authoritarian regimes compels the continent's young people to risk death to escape to Europe.Due to the restrictions on freedom of expression and association and also because of the lack of space of entertainment, art and creativity, young people feel suffocated, humiliated, without dignity - foreigners in their own country and the only horizon they can see is the one beyond the sea.
Spread the word